


mine's not a high horse

by moondown



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Post-Golden Deer Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spoilers for Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:28:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26670667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moondown/pseuds/moondown
Summary: Sylvain should have known Felix wouldn’t make things simple. Maybe Sylvain didn’t deserve simple after the stunt he’d pulled. He still couldn’t explain the possession over him, the tar-black anger that blistered his belly that night. Was it enough to say he’d been hurt, that he wanted Felix to know what he’d put him and Ingrid through? To say: I could break your trust and change your life, and it would be this easy?——Felix and Sylvain meet again. Based off their non-Azure Moon ending; updates biweekly.Update: Slowing down for the Holidays! I'll post when I can, but I should be back on schedule in January.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 8
Kudos: 38





	1. Chapter 1

_Even after the war's end, skirmishes continued to break out across Fódlan. Learning that there were still places where he could fight, Felix abandoned his noble title and chose to make a living with his sword. Decades later, he reunited briefly with Sylvain, who had need of his services as Margrave Gautier. Felix departed as soon as the job was finished, however, and the two never met again. Years later, a sword that was thought to have belonged to Felix arrived on Sylvain's doorstep._

§

Love, how the hours accumulate. Uncountable.   
The trees grow tall, some people walk away   
and diminish forever.

Li-Young Lee, _Rose_

§

It took time to find someone that didn’t want to be found. That was among the first lessons the current Margrave learned after inheriting his father’s title, but even decades later, it proved a loathsome fact. 

He sighed over the letter he’d received from an informant and rubbed his rusty beard, rereading the message. It was short and dissatisfying: _…last seen in Kleiman region four months ago, where he took a job for a minor noble. After payment, headed southeast._

The information was frustrating for two reasons: first, Kleiman was a peninsula in Faerghus, so moving south meant the person he was searching for could have gone anywhere below the capital; second, four months was a long time to be off the grid. The trail was dangerously close to going cold again.

Had someone told Sylvain, back in his academy days, that he’d spend his life halfheartedly searching for a lost friend, he would have laughed in their face. After all, he wasn’t sentimental, and he made a good effort to drive off anyone who might ever have loved him, anyway. 

But when he returned to Gautier territory after the war, he knew he’d changed. The change was different than writers before him had described—at the end of the day, all war really changed was his reflection. It made Sylvain look at himself in his rawest, most open state. 

He saw that his face had darkened. He saw his shoulders sagging under the weight of dead men. He saw coins as they were placed over his eyes and saw himself awakening to a ferryman plucking them out. He saw he was older and lonely. He saw that he’d wasted his life, that life had been wasted on him. 

Sylvain turned to religion, though he’d never cared to before, and decided if the Goddess—or some other deity, or the ghosts of his country—saw it fit to let him live, he might as well commit himself to his duty. 

Of course it was too late. That was the plight of their generation. They’d inherited a kingdom in shambles. Dimitri was long dead. Dutiful Ingrid, at least, was proud of him. And Felix…

It was funny. In all the years they’d spent together as friends, classmates, and brothers in arms, they’d never once been on the same page. 

As soon as Sylvain made the decision to stop running away, Felix disappeared—and the last time anyone had seen him was, apparently, four months ago in Kleiman. 

Sylvain foolishly allowed himself to think that there was hope in that. He recalled various letters of Felix’s past whereabouts: in Enbarr, Gloucester, Gideon, Varley. From what Sylvain knew, this was as close to northern Faerghus as Felix had come, at least in the last year, when the Margrave had strengthened his search. And, this close, it was possible Felix had heard by word of mouth that his old friend wanted to see him.

Laying the letter on his desk, Sylvain poured himself a drink and considered his next course of action. 

His thoughts came to him more freely and wildly with whiskey. He let himself imagine impossible scenarios: finding Felix at a bar, consequently buying him a drink to make known his presence; Ingrid, after admitting she’d been exchanging letters with Felix in secret for the last twenty years, handing him a paper with Felix’s home address; Felix making his way to the estate on his own. 

All of the scenarios felt ridiculous and futile, yet enjoyable. Sylvain breathed a laugh as he polished off his first glass. How many hells would freeze over before any single one of them happened? 

There was a knock on his door. It was ignorable enough for him to know that a servant waited beyond the study. 

Sylvain blinked slowly at his whiskey glass, which was empty again, though he swore he’d just refilled it. Then he cleared his throat. 

“Come in.” 

One of the maids entered. Sylvain looked at her hands and furrowed his brow. She was holding a letter. 

“This came for you, Margrave,” the maid affirmed. 

After Sylvain stood to retrieve it, she curtseyed and exited. The door snicked softly, a closing mouth. Alone, Sylvain leaned his shoulder against the wall and opened the letter to find that his suspicions were right: it was from his informant. 

_Fraldarius last seen in Fhirdiad_ , it read. It was dated three days ago. Sylvain’s heart split and the two halves beat against his ribcage like wyvern wings. He read it again. _Fraldarius last seen in Fhirdiad._

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

Sylvain held the letter over his violent heart. His thoughts tumbled over each other. If he wanted something to come of this, he had to act fast. 

Sylvain hurried back to his desk. He fumbled with drawers and papers and quills. He penned a letter, then crumpled it. He penned a second letter and crumpled it. He repeated this pattern a few more times, and as he did, finished a third shot of whiskey. Eventually, he wrote something he could stomach. He rolled it tightly, sealing it with wax and a kiss for good luck. 

Night had fallen fully by the time he carried the letter to his page. Sylvain had glimpsed his ghostly reflection in one of the windows he passed on his way to the servants’ quarters. The dark had swallowed the acres of land surrounding the estate and left his body floating on stormy seas. He thought about stopping, looking beyond himself and into the thicket of stars—but if there was a sign in the whole wide sky that would keep him from doing this, he decided he didn’t want to see it. 

He told the page, at first sign of light, to ride to Fhirdiad and deliver the letter to Ashe Ubert. Ashe ran a popular inn in the capital city; mercenaries came and went all the time. Felix would have, of course, avoided lodging there, but that was accounted for in Sylvain’s plan. As he struggled to sleep that night, he combed through each detail outlined in the letter and, perceiving no missteps, clung to foolish hope. 

It may have taken time to find someone that didn’t want to be found—but in his lifetime, Sylvain had learned another loathsome, irrefutable fact: 

Word spread fast. 

§

Sylvain’s reputation had always preceded him. He’d never forget what Flayn parroted from the mouth of her brother, or how many monastery girls flew from him after Ingrid loudly announced he’d flirted with a scarecrow. There’d been a lull in the gossip during the war, but soon after, rumors followed him home like a starved, stray dog. 

It never bothered him much. In the grand scheme of things, he was lucky: he got in trouble for a lot less than what he did, and he was charming and rich enough to buy back any trust he might have lost. 

His father, up until the day he died, absolutely hated it. He was always trying to stomp out the embers before they caught flame. Unfortunately for him, it only worked about half the time. 

Part of his father’s low success rate was that Sylvain realized he could use gossip to his benefit. If he didn’t like a potential engagement partner, he would make himself seen with a commoner girl on his arm. When he planned attacks on Sreng, he’d falsify strategies and leak them to the spies. In a strange way, all this gave him more control over his own life. 

After a week passed with no sign of Felix, Sylvain felt that control slipping through his fingers. It made him antsy. His personal horse noticed when he went to see her in the stable, carrying an apple she refused to eat. 

“Come on,” he coaxed, but she only whinnied nervously. 

That afternoon, Sylvain sat on the porch and looked out at the orchard. Apples were one of the few crops that actually grew in Faerghus; the trees liked ground that was relentless and cold. It was about fifteen years ago, right after his father passed away, that Sylvain tilled a portion of estate land and planted hundreds of apple trees. When a lesser noble asked why, he answered as if he’d done it on a simple whim: “I like apples.” 

Of course it also turned out to be a decent business venture. Several merchants of nearby towns sold Gautier apples to the villagers, and he shipped crates of them to Ashe’s inn. People who liked them said it was because they were a little tart.

Sylvain dozed for a couple of hours, on and off. Sleep hadn’t been kind to him for the last week, so like a common thief, he stole pouches of it when he could. The sun was just starting to lower when he stood up and stretched his arms above his head.

He couldn’t afford to waste much more time. Sylvain knew that, yet he clung to the unlikelihood of Felix’s return. 

The logic all pointed to a dead end. It took three days for the informant’s letter to reach Sylvain, and two or three days for Sylvain’s letter to reach Ashe. Almost a week in total—now two had passed. The person spotted in Fhirdiad might not have been Felix at all, but a lookalike. Felix could be anywhere. 

This inflicted a tingling numbness in Sylvain: a frostnip. Felix had been gone too long for Sylvain to feel much more than that. The anger, the grief, the ache of abandonment, the _jealousy_ —all of that had already melted off of him. Truthfully it had taken a while. But it was done. 

Sylvain returned to his study and after some hours called for one of his maids. She was a pretty thing with dark, long hair. She smiled and twirled a strand around her finger when she came inside. Sylvain favored her because she reminded him of Dorothea, whom he never managed to win over. 

“Did you need me for something?” she asked.

Yeah, he knows what you’re thinking: he’s going to fuck the maid. And you’d be wrong. He called her in because her father had been a general for the Gautiers before he suddenly died, and she was smart as a whip. 

The maid, Emily, had kind of a sad story. After her father passed, her mother remarried a noble with a gambling problem. He ate up the mother’s savings and, consequently, Emily’s inheritance. Sylvain had given her this position as a kindness, though he knew well that it wasn’t enough. He would’ve made her a soldier if he didn’t think it would ruin her.

Soldier or not, Emily was a good strategist. Sylvain would sometimes prepare a battle board just to watch her position the pawns. That evening, he wanted to run something by her. 

“I thought I could move soldiers by sea,” he said, shuttling pawns toward the northern coast of the Gautier territory, “and send a decoy ship toward the port town. Later, a second ship would set out and dock in a hidden location on the coast. While enemy forces are being moved toward the town, that group could ambush the remaining troops in the mountains.”

Emily tapped her chin in thought. “Is there a safe place to dock on Sreng’s coast?” 

“Yeah,” Sylvain sighed. “That’s where I’m stuck. I have maps of the region, but they’re about five years out of date.” 

The problem with a continent opening its borders meant they had to trust the people outside not to take advantage of that. Some places, like Almyra and Brigid, were quick to ally with the unified Fodlan. Sreng still wanted old Kingdom land under their rule, so the fighting continued bitterly. It was impossible to find peace for everyone. 

Sylvain and Emily continued fiddling with the pawns on the map, bouncing ideas back and forth, but not much came of it. Around nine he thanked her for her company and sent her back to the servants’ quarters. He lingered at the map with his chin tucked in his finger and thumb, stroking his beard in thought. 

§

The first time Sylvain got Ingrid blackout drunk was the last. She was a fucking sad drunk. He learned she was plated in a figurative armor all the time. He learned that beyond all that armor her skin was as thin as a ghost’s. 

“I failed him,” Ingrid warbled. She sniffed and peered into her empty glass, running her hands through her straw hair. “What sort of pathetic knight turns their blade against their king?” 

It was a year after the war ended. Claude and Byleth were working to unify Fodlan, but the continent was a slow-healing wound. It kept opening up and soaking the gauze with more blood. 

Sylvain didn’t know what to say. Dimitri died horribly and without his old friends. 

He tried to comfort Ingrid with semantics: “It wasn’t his highness that we were fighting against.” The words made his heart pang.

Ingrid was obsessed with all Dimitri could have done, with all he never got to do. To her, he was another Glenn—torn from the world too soon. 

They didn’t talk about Felix, but Sylvain thought about him. _If Felix was here, he’d shatter Ingrid’s teeth like glass._ He had always hated reminiscing the dead. 

Sylvain veered into a subject change. “What do you want to do, Ingrid?” She was confused, so he clarified: “What’s on your bucket list?”

They spent the rest of the night itemizing. Ingrid wanted to do things that seemed quintessential to her, like one: _Marry well for the sake of my family_ ; and seven: _Try every kind of food_. Some things on her list surprised him. Three was _Become an ambassador for the people of Fodlan and Duscur_. The second was the same as Sylvain’s: _Find Felix_. 

He didn’t know why it was surprising. The war had cost him and Ingrid so much already, and then they lost someone else; of course they wanted him back. Maybe it only surprised him because they were both still angry. They didn’t talk about Felix because holding his name in their mouths felt like a curse. 

Sylvain had only two things on his list. You know the second. The first was, simply: _Hang on_. 

§

At some level, Sylvain had always believed in fate. He thought it was only a matter of time until so many coincidences added up to something, that parallel paths eventually crossed. He believed in the stars, that something out there—the Goddess, wayseers, history books—mapped out his life before he ever came to be. He believed in the possibility of the impossible. 

Three weeks after the sighting in Fhirdiad, hell froze over. Maybe a couple of pigs flew over the Gautier estate, but Sylvain forgot to check. When his eyes fell onto his strange visitor, he forgot he even had a tongue. 

The man had, apparently, snuck past the guards posted around the estate and grabbed the first maid that passed him in the foyer. He must have scared the shit out of her; she had trembled in Sylvain’s chambers as he dressed to greet their uninvited guest, and she trembled now on the stairs behind him. 

“Sylvain,” said Felix Fraldarius. He held up his gloved hand. Folded between two fingers was a piece of paper. 

He demanded, sardonic as ever: “Care to explain?” 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I decided to post this chapter early, but the next will come on October 19.

For twenty years, Sylvain had been lying to himself. 

Felix was standing in his foyer like he was supposed to be there, looking predictably rugged and inexplicably beautiful. He’d grown out his hair. His expression was severe, each feature gripping and sharp like a crow’s dark talon. 

Sylvain realized that he wasn’t ever angry at Felix. Instead he wished, with dangerous lucidity, that Felix was dead. Sylvain realized he wanted to fucking kill him. 

Felix now carried an ugly scar on his face. It was old, which was why it took Sylvain a moment to notice. Then Felix shifted his weight, and candlelight brightened the thick line from the bottom of his eye to his jaw, which had healed partly crushed. Sylvain thanked whatever did that to him and it made him feel cruel. 

Felix grew impatient. “Well?”

Sylvain swallowed and faced his shocked maid. With a gesture toward the cellar, he asked her to fetch a bottle of red wine and bring it to the sitting room. 

“I’m not—” 

“This way,” Sylvain cut Felix off, and passed him without looking. 

Felix followed silently. He was literally silent. He seemed to know where to step on the old floors without making a sound; Sylvain couldn’t even hear his breathing. Felix’s only giveaway was the feeling of his eyes boring into the back of Sylvain’s head. 

Sylvain entered the room first and, after lighting a few candles, went to one of the shelves lining the walls. He kept some fine cigars in a box disguised as a book, and he wanted to smoke one. He pried the box from between two historical texts and opened it. 

The low light made everything inside look grainy. Sylvain ran his fingers over the fat cigar as if to ensure it was actually there.

He heard a gasp and lifted his chin. A maid was stalled in the doorway, a bottle held like a useless shield in front of her chest. Felix had taken, generously, about two steps inside and was glaring at her. 

“It’s alright,” Sylvain assured. He plucked out the cigar, then latched the box and tucked it under his arm. He opened his free hand. “Just bring it to me.”

After receiving the wine, he dismissed the maid and told her to shut the door behind her. Felix tensed like some caged beast; his eyes darted to the window and stayed. Sylvain wondered if Felix was thinking he could use it as an escape. There was a chance Sylvain was going to kill him, so it made sense.

Sylvain himself sat on a loveseat. It faced another, identical loveseat. Between the two rested a short wooden table, which held matches, a candle, and a rarely used tea set. Everything sat on a gold and maroon rug imported from Dagda. 

Sylvain struck a match to light his cigar. The smell was potent and exotic, the smoke as thick as hair. Sylvain’s chest tightened around a stinging burn, remaining tight even as he exhaled. 

“Please, sit.” 

Felix glowered at him. He kept his hand on his sword hilt. “I’ll stand.”

“Okay,” Sylvain replied, neutral. 

He set the wine on the table and lounged as he smoked, scraping his eyes down Felix unapologetically. In some ways it felt like an appraisal of a ring—some dents, dings, and blemishes, but otherwise in good condition. Still visibly pretty. Not to mention the room’s dimness softened him some. 

There were a lot of things to talk about, some conversations more pressing than others. Sylvain said nothing. It occurred to him, slowly, that he could be dreaming. Or batshit. He thought this might be the single craziest thing ever to happen to him. 

“Did you see the orchard?” Sylvain asked. 

Felix huffed through his nose like a bull. Small talk was a waste of his time; remembering this brought Sylvain pleasure. He smiled. 

“I should hire someone to paint it,” Sylvain mused. “Ignatz could, probably. I wonder if he still works for Lorenz.” 

His smile slipped away. The look he gave Felix felt raw. He couldn’t rearrange his expression if he tried. 

“Goddess,” he breathed. “I want to hurt you.”

“Obviously,” Felix said sharply. He finally stepped further into the room, rounded the empty loveseat, and bent to slap the unfolded page on the table. “Since you put a bounty on my head.” 

Either the cigar or the indictment made Sylvain feel sick. He blamed the cigar, and he put it out by twisting the end into the underside of the table. Then he leaned to get a better look at the wanted poster. 

It was surprising how much the drawing resembled Felix. The eyes were cool like stone. The hair, as reported, was long—though instead of being pulled into a tight ponytail as depicted, it actually fell loose down his back. All the portrait was really missing was the scar, which Sylvain let himself look at again. It was like a streak left by a tear.

“Well?” Felix said again. 

“I’m surprised it worked,” Sylvain admitted. 

“You almost got me killed.” 

“Yeah, well, you’re not out of the woods yet.” Sylvain pressed his hands to his knees and stood. Felix went on the defensive, poised to draw. 

“Calm down,” Sylvain said. “I’m just getting a corkscrew.” 

Sylvain pulled the corkscrew out of a little drawer in an end table. He kept one in almost every room of the house. He didn’t have proper glasses, though, so after he opened the bottle, he poured wine into two teacups. 

Felix sat down across from him, agitated. The teacup had a delicate floral design; he looked funny holding it. He downed the wine fast. 

Sylvain used to love getting Felix drunk. It was the only time he loosened up enough to let him play with his hair. But tonight, Sylvain could tell they were both too tense to lower their guard. He poured more wine into Felix’s cup, anyway. 

“I didn’t know how else to find you,” Sylvain began. “I’d been told you were in Fhirdiad. You were too close not to…” 

He paused to reorganize his thoughts, then tried again. 

“I’d been trying to get in touch with you for a while. Maybe you never heard. Maybe you did and I took your choice away from you.” Sylvain sighed. “But I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t need your help.” 

“So, this was a trap,” Felix scoffed. He looked pissed off about having waltzed right into it. “And, to clarify—you do want me dead.” 

Sylvain was quiet. He spun his wine before taking a sip. 

Eventually, he said, “I think if you were dead, I would have an easier time forgiving you.” 

They drank in a familiar cold silence. Felix stained his mouth plum. He had obviously built up a better tolerance for alcohol over the years. They were halfway through the bottle and while Sylvain was starting to feel sleepy, Felix looked thoughtful and alert.

“You need to fix this,” Felix finally told him. He was talking about the poster. “This affects my livelihood.” 

Sylvain wasn’t feeling particularly virtuous. “I’ll fix it if you take this job.” 

Felix looked like he wanted to stab him. Even if he did, the damage to his reputation was already done. Sylvain earned the upper hand as soon as the poster went up in Ashe’s inn. 

Sylvain could tell Felix had to force his voice to stay level. “What,” Felix asked, “is the job?”

§

Aging was strange for Sylvain. It was probably because he was convinced that he would die in the war. Even now he sometimes woke from dreams surprised to find he was in his bed, sunlight streaming into his room like an invitation. He led battles against Sreng half-expecting to lose his head. That way of thinking had always made him careless. 

People in Faerghus used to say only the strong survived, but Sylvain was a living antithesis: alive through sheer dumb luck. 

Proof rested in a cyclone-shaped scar above Sylvain’s heart. It was newer than most of his scars—pink as a hyacinth. He’d gotten it from a Sreng general who’d knocked him off his horse. When Sylvain hit the ground, his peripherals blackened and he lost his hearing for a second. He spit out a bloody back tooth. 

He’d dropped his weapon when he fell. When he realized that he surged and scrambled across the ground like a fish out of water. He hated to think about it now, how feral his desperation had been. Aging was strange in yet another way. The older he got, the less prepared he was to die. 

Sylvain was flipped onto his back. The general stood over him like Poseidon; he held a glowing trident in the vivid blue sky. Then he plunged it into Sylvain’s chest and twisted. 

Sylvain had never felt pain like that. Pain that made him taste the heavens. Human bodies weren’t built to handle the universe, and the universe was unforgiving. It shredded him apart. 

But he hung on. 

His armor had saved him from the worst of it, though everything was touch-and-go for a while. He had so many visitors that it felt like a funeral viewing. He mentioned that to Mercedes, who giggled and replied airily, “Oh, Sylvain, you know I didn’t come to say goodbye, don’t you?”

It wasn’t until he had recovered fully that he remembered Mercedes was dead. She had been buried a few years before. Disease decimated a village near Garreg Mach, and she went with the Knights of Seiros to spread light and help where she could. 

Her whole group got sick. Sylvain wrote a letter wishing her a speedy recovery, and a few days later, got a response saying she was already gone. There was a time Sylvain would have been angry about her death. But he knew Mercedes too well. Even if she realized her fate—and he suspected she did—she still would have made that pilgrimage. 

At the end of the day, Sylvain figured he was just too chickenshit to die. Besides, something big had started, and it was his duty to see it through. 

§

“You let Sreng have the Lance of Ruin,” Felix repeated. 

His voice pierced like a stalactite. Sylvain’s scar throbbed and he winced slightly. He had drunk enough wine that speaking with Felix almost felt normal, and this was the most familiar he’d sounded so far. 

“I said they stole it,” Sylvain answered. “Not that I just handed it over.”

He split the last of the wine between their cups. A drop fell from the bottle and landed on the poster, splattering like a bead of blood on Felix’s cheek. 

Sylvain continued: “I’ve sent spies to determine its location. It sounds like it’s being held in a major base on the border. After what it did to the general, they don’t seem to want anyone to touch it.” 

It was another stroke of dumb luck. People outside of Fodlan didn’t have weapons like these; they didn’t expect the consequence of using them. Ten months had passed since the lance’s theft, but it was still close to Gautier territory and hadn’t been destroyed. Coincidences like that could make agnostics glimpse at the sky in gratitude. 

Sylvain chanced a look at Felix. He sat with his arms folded, brow furrowed at the last dregs of wine in his cup. Sylvain used to be better at reading his expression. What the hell was he thinking? 

In a distant room, an old clock chimed, signaling midnight. Felix twitched and looked at the door while the sound echoed, haunting. He was as divine as a wolf. Sylvain was no good with a bow, but he thought about piercing Felix with an arrow—taking a single, merciful shot through his heart. 

It was a half-assed wish. The thought of violence was starting to drain him. The longer he looked at Felix the more Felix started blurring at the edges. 

Sylvain blinked until his vision cleared. He scrubbed his hand over his beard. He was tired, and he felt like an old fool. 

“What are you asking me to do,” Felix said. 

In short, Sylvain’s new plan was to cross the border by scaling the mountains. From there, he would descend into the base, sneak into their heavily guarded armory, and steal back the lance. He had a couple of spies that were willing help him, and he planned to send a mid-sized battalion up the coast as a distraction. He wanted to avoid needless deaths and wanted Felix to come with him. 

Felix realized immediately: “That’s a suicide mission.” 

Then Felix realized something else. It fell like a dark curtain over his face. 

The bounty had already made him a dead man. Sylvain put a high price on his head, and for that amount of money, good men would turn on their own brothers. 

“Stay the night,” Sylvain said. He stood slowly, the seat and his body creaking. “Give it some thought.”

Felix stayed put, glaring at him. His jaw was set a little off, or it looked that way because of the scar. Every reunion Sylvain had imagined over the years had looked completely different in his head. The real thing was hard to stomach, poisoned by the past. 

“Come on, Felix. I’ll see you to a room.” Sylvain said. He pushed through but could barely say Felix’s name: it came out softer than the rest of his sentence, pricked his tongue like a splinter. He pointed at the door with his bearded chin. 

The walk was silent. They didn’t say goodnight. The lock clicked as soon as Felix disappeared into a guest room, with such finality it felt like the end of a book.

Sylvain returned, exhausted, to his quarters. As soon as he was alone, he sagged under the weight on his shoulders—exhaled and inhaled loudly, repetitively, lashes flickering in the darkness. The moon shone onto his bed like a blessing. Sylvain half-felt his way into it, and then collapsed onto the quilts like his soul had slipped out of him. 

He looked at the ceiling, amorphous shadows shapeshifting into wolf heads; then a snake pit of groping hands.

§

Felix wasn’t in the guest room the next morning. What Sylvain felt as he pulled a long strand of hair off of a pillow was numbing. Maybe seeing Sylvain had exhausted Felix, too. Maybe death by a stranger was better than renewing a promise to die with an old friend. 

Downstairs, Sylvain asked a maid to brew coffee. He ate breakfast and read letters under the light of a dining room window. It was bright outside, and stupidly easy to fall back into routine. When he was finished, he grabbed an apple from a basket on the counter and walked to the stables. 

Today Sylvain was calm. His horse ate the apple from his palm, her snout bunting his skin. Afterward he brushed her coat and mane. 

He needed to write Ingrid to let her know he would be gone from the estate for some time, though he wasn’t sure yet what lie to tell her. 

The sun was still high when Sylvain saddled his horse and rode her into the orchard. The trees were laid out in a grid, far enough apart that he could easily steer between rows, and shade leafed his moving figure. 

There were hundreds of trees. When you were walking between them, the paths felt endless and magical. In some parts, the orchard gave the illusion you could get lost. 

“Whoa, girl,” Sylvain soothed. His horse had stuttered and begun to rear. Under his hand she landed and paused, looking to the east. 

Standing in the shade of a tree was Felix. His arms were crossed. His hair was spackled with light and looked almost blue. Sleepy violets clustered under his eyes. 

It was a different experience, seeing him in the daytime. The pain was sharp.

Sylvain dismounted and tied his horse to a trunk. He approached Felix like you would approach a wild animal: slow and cautious; ready to fight back. He kept a dagger strapped around his thigh for a reason. 

“You’re still here,” Sylvain said. 

Felix clenched his jaw and lowered his eyes and hummed. _Hmph_. 

An unseen bird flitted from one tree to another. Felix seemed to be listening to it. Sylvain got the feeling he knew exactly where it was by sound alone, that he could shoot it out of the branches if he wanted to. 

“You said you needed me,” Felix finally said. He pinned Sylvain with his eyes. “Why me?” 

Sylvain couldn’t explain if he tried. It was just a feeling. As much as Felix preached against knighthood during the war, he was the perfect goddamn knight: he protected everyone and would bleed to do it. Sylvain had heard stories over the years, and he knew from those that Felix was the same as he’d always been. Maybe Sylvain wanted Felix because he thought he would bleed for him, too. 

But Sylvain shook his head. He wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of an answer after waiting twenty years for Felix to explain himself. 

Felix thinned his mouth and gritted: “You’ve forced my hand.”

Sylvain agreed, but wasn’t sorry for it. 

The bird took off again, this time visible, its bleak shadow passing over the ground. Felix tilted his chin to watch the creature fly out of sight. Sylvain thought it must be a metaphor, but he didn’t know what for. 

“You’ll pay me double what you wanted for my head,” Felix finally said, “and have the posters taken down before we go.” 

“After,” Sylvain said. He wasn’t in the mood to barter, and he didn’t trust Felix not to run. “No one that close to the border will have seen it.”

“Immediately after we return,” Felix relented.

Sylvain agreed. “And…you can stay here until we go, and after, if you need.”

Felix paused. He scuffed the bottom of his shoe against the ground as he gave it a moment’s thought. Finally, he murmured, “Alright.” 

Sylvain would need a week or more to prepare; to ready a battalion and gather provisions. He would leave his estate in the hands of his servants and ask Ingrid to handle business in his stead. It would be a difficult journey, but when Felix had spoken, it felt like a renewed promise—he was certain, somehow, that they would return.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick warning for what might be slightly jarring, violent imagery in the first paragraph of section four. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

Sylvain really needed to have a talk with Felix about not scaring the servants. There was at least one maid that looked like she hadn’t slept in a week with him prowling the estate. Sylvain wasn’t even being facetious with the word— _prowling_ was exactly what Felix did. He slipped silently out of the house before the break of dawn and slipped silently back in after nightfall. In a few days’ time, there were rumors circulating in the servants’ quarters about the strange way he flitted in and out of sight. The young page genuinely thought Felix was a ghost. 

Sylvain thought the whole thing was hilarious, in a twist-the-knife sort of way. He’d spent all this time trying to find Felix. Now that Felix was found, Sylvain felt his absence tenfold. 

They would be leaving soon, give or take a couple days. Last week, Sylvain sent his excuses to Ingrid and procured horses and provisions. He’d been going diligently to his personal training grounds to spar. The night before, he finalized a few plans with Emily. Unfortunately, she left his quarters late, which probably didn’t help with any rumors. 

Sweat dropped off Sylvain’s nose. He’d spent the morning practicing with a dummy, switching off between a lance and sword. He had just moved to the sword. It always took him a few minutes to adjust to its size and weight. He thrusted with too much force and unbalanced his stance. 

“That’s shoddy footwork, Gautier.” 

Sylvain looked over. Felix was bent in the doorway, gathering his long hair into his hands. After he straightened, he tied it off into a heavy, loose bun. He had grown a thin beard and mustache since arriving on Gautier land, and it reminded Sylvain of Felix’s father, whom he hadn’t thought of in some time. 

“Alright,” Sylvain chuckled. “Show me how it’s done.” 

Joking around felt strange, but at least the desire to kill Felix had passed after Sylvain tried to do it. 

It was the second night Felix stayed in the estate, hours after he’d agreed to the plan: Sylvain broke into his room, pinned him to the bed, jerked back a fistful of hair to bare Felix’s throat and held a knife to it. Felix folded his mouth into a hard line. He was silent and watched Sylvain like he’d been expecting it. 

Felix didn’t look scared at all. Sylvain was terrified. To hide it, he gritted his teeth and pressed the blade against Felix’s neck until a thin line of blood dribbled out. 

Sylvain wanted to forgive him. He wanted it desperately. 

“Shit,” Sylvain whispered. He withdrew the knife. Then he bowed his head and ran a hand through his hair, red as the pomegranate Persephone was shackled by. 

Felix made no sudden moves. In the suffocating dark—Sylvain straddling Felix’s waist, the knife held slack in his hand—both came to a tentative understanding.

There was nothing tentative about Felix’s fighting or footwork. He came at Sylvain fast and relentless. In their first bout, Felix disarmed Sylvain in under a minute. The second was even quicker.

Felix still liked to trash talk. He almost smirked when he was doing it: “Looks like age is catching up with you.”

“Okay, timeout.” Sylvain tossed his sword aside with a clatter and picked up a lance. He went into a lower stance, knees bent and feet wide. 

They started up again. It took Felix longer to best him this time, but he still did it. He uppercut his sword into Sylvain’s stomach, the wood pushing in hard under his rib. Felix’s breath was ragged and his face was flushed. The scar stood out like a bolt of lightning. 

“You’re dead,” he told him. 

Sylvain was starting to think that Felix was right about his plan. It would’ve been suicide if he’d gone alone. He didn’t realize until this instant how much his cushy life softened him up; it was embarrassing. 

Sylvain tossed Felix a spare towel and mopped his own hot face. 

“So—what made you decide I was deserving of your presence,” he asked conversationally. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you did.” Sylvain peeled the towel away and flicked it over his shoulder. “You’ve got to stop spooking my servants.”

Felix scoffed and walked the training sword to the wall, where he hung it. 

“I’m serious,” Sylvain aired. “They think you’re a weirdo.”

Felix answered his first question: “I wanted to see who I was working with.” His gaze cut to Sylvain slyly. “No one impressive.”

Sylvain’s mouth quirked on one side. He felt it distantly. Felix was looking at him the same as he had the night Sylvain tried to kill him, and the look peeled. It was hard to describe it another way. 

“You used to…” Felix said. 

He clamped his mouth and turned his face. Sylvain studied his smooth profile, the scar hidden on the other side. From this angle Felix looked young and old at once. It hit Sylvain again how much time had passed, and it always hit like a sucker punch. 

The last time Sylvain saw Felix was in Itha, a small territory that rested between Fraldarius and Gautier. It was only a few weeks after the war ended. They were traveling from the monastery to Faerghus with Ingrid, who had already parted ways for Galatea. 

The happiness Sylvain felt was dull, but there. He thought he could count that alone as a victory. Meanwhile, Felix seesawed between pensive and agitated. He spent the trip trying to pick fights with his companions. It was like he was itching for it. 

Sylvain couldn’t remember what was said before their paths diverged. He used to know. But the most vivid gleam in his memory, now, was Felix’s sword hilt as the sun caught it just right. 

It was just for a second. It reflected like a star at Felix’s hip, then shot off like a granted wish.

§

Ingrid responded to Sylvain’s message the way he expected her to. She was pissed off. But he guessed wrong about what she might be pissed off about. Enclosed was a copy of Felix’s poster and a lecture, including phrases like, _How could you?_ and _These are serious accusations!_ When they were kids, Sylvain’s knee-jerk reaction would’ve been to minimize or pretend it wasn’t his fault. Unfortunately, it was hard to lie about where the poster came from when _BRING DEAD OR ALIVE TO MARGRAVE GAUTIER_ was stamped at the bottom. 

Word had spread faster than even Sylvain expected. What kind of inn was Ashe running?

Worse, Felix had apparently taken his words in the training grounds to heart, for he returned to the manor before sundown, when the sky was a spasm of orange and purple. His presence was given away by a maid’s squeak. Sylvain was working in the dining room and scrambled to hide the letter and poster from view. 

It didn’t matter, though; Felix didn’t visit him. Sylvain was both disappointed and relieved. He finished writing his response to Ingrid, and without him hovering close by, it was easy to leave Felix’s spectral presence in the Gautier estate out of it. 

_I promise,_ he wrote as he closed his message. _It will all blow over soon_.

§

At sundown, Sylvain had a servant invite Felix to dinner. He wasn’t surprised when Felix didn’t show. He ate alone as usual and afterward retired to his study, where he drank and read for a while. The reading was dull and his mind kept wandering, but it wasn’t until after his second glass that he made another insane decision. Soon, he was knocking on Felix’s door with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and two glasses in the other.

“I think we need to get on the right foot,” Sylvain said when Felix opened it. 

“You mean you need to ease your conscience,” Felix answered. He still stepped aside to let Sylvain inside.

The room looked lived in, which made it feel unfamiliar to Sylvain. He glanced at the things Felix had strewn around and itched to straighten up. The traveler’s bag he’d shown up with was open and gaping in a corner chair, its contents mysteriously shadowed and difficult to make out. Felix’s coat was draped over the corner of his unmade bed. A spent candle sweated wax in large droplets as it burned away the last of itself. 

Sylvain nodded at it. “I’ll have a servant bring a new one.” 

“Thanks.” 

Sylvain forgot what he was doing. He started to step back out, intent on locating a maid, until Felix rooted him to the spot: “Sylvain.”

The door was shut. Sylvain sat the glasses on a round table and poured a drink for them both. The whiskey was a dark copper color, smooth as melted gold. He told Felix about it as he passed him a glass. 

The brand was actually more popular in Enbarr; it had been the preference of an Adrestian lady his father had picked for him many years ago. Gorgeous woman—a brunette. But Sylvain couldn’t stop staring at her earrings, which looked like chandeliers: hung from their gold hooks were strings of diamonds, glistening like fireflies. Haphazard as they caught the light. 

“I haven’t been outraged by anyone’s earrings,” Felix said. He held out his emptied glass. “So I’ll assume it didn’t work out.”

“No, I…” Sylvain shook his head and poured Felix a second shot. “I never married.” 

That wasn’t to say he couldn’t have. There were a few times Sylvain came close, but then she’d do something he didn’t like—chewed with her mouth open, wanted too many children or wanted none, laughed unattractively—and he’d call it off. 

Of course the problem wasn’t with any of them. Sylvain had just done what he always did, which was make himself miserable. 

A few drinks later, Felix mentioned he never married, either. That didn’t come as a surprise to Sylvain. What did surprise him was the tender way Felix spoke of a partner he’d traveled with for some years after the war. Felix didn’t give a name, but described him as capable and protective, and did so with a wistful look in his eye. They were halfway through the bottle now; Felix looked affected this time. 

“What happened to him?” Sylvain asked. 

They had abandoned glasses and were taking swigs straight from the bottle’s mouth. Felix’s face scrunched as he swallowed. 

“What always happens,” Felix said, which meant he was dead.

That was another thing about aging. Another loved one would inevitably pass, and it inevitably felt too soon. Sylvain had eventually come to Ingrid’s side: every life was left incomplete. 

Sylvain’s father had been gray and weak for a long time before he died. It was planned for and peaceful; the old Margrave had slipped away in his sleep. And even then, Sylvain thought it was too soon. His father had planned to write a letter to Edmund, and had the maid save a piece of apple pie for his breakfast. He needed one more day, at least, to finish those things. 

Felix passed the whiskey to Sylvain, who took a hefty swig in his father’s honor. He knew the past wasn’t safe to relive, so he mentioned, “We’ll be leaving soon…” 

It hung, visible like heat in the air. 

“Are you prepared?” Felix asked. 

Sylvain smiled wryly. “Guess we’ll see.” 

He knew as soon as he said it that the answer was wrong. Felix scoffed and turned his face toward a window set into the wall, which reflected him and Sylvain as if it was a mirror. They were sitting across from each other at the round table. Sylvain took another pull from the bottle. 

“I’m not dying for you,” Felix leveled. He was serious; it lowered his voice. “So don’t be a fool. At least not any more than you’ve already been.” 

The bottle clunked against the wood as Sylvain lowered it with force. Felix looked at him, unimpressed. It felt like all anybody really talked about anymore was dying or refusing to die. Why didn’t they just talk about apples?

“I’m not trying to get you killed,” Sylvain said slowly. He was talking oranges. 

Felix _hmphed_. 

Sylvain should have known he wouldn’t make things simple. Maybe Sylvain didn’t deserve simple after the stunt he’d pulled. He still couldn’t explain the possession over him, the tar-black anger that blistered his belly that night—was it enough to say he’d been hurt, that he wanted Felix to know what he’d put him and Ingrid through? To say, _I could break your trust and change your life, and it would be this easy?_

They’d both managed to do something the other couldn’t forgive, and they’d both done it in a single, brash moment: Sylvain when he stared Felix in the eye; Felix when he didn’t look back. 

§

Of course Sylvain left soon after, retiring to his room and a fitful sleep. All night he dreamt of ghosts—Dimitri, Mercedes, Dedue. Dedue’s death had always stuck with Sylvain because it had been so utterly pointless. Or maybe it stuck with him because, by the time Claude’s army fought their way into Edelgard’s throne room, Dedue was on his stomach with his head split into a V. 

That dream transitioned into one about Ingrid screaming at him for not telling her about Felix. Sylvain kept gesturing to an empty doorway, yelling, “He’s right there! Look! _Look!_ ” 

The following day Sylvain and Felix spent apart. The servants were back to talking about the latter, though now they were talking about Sylvain, too. Each time the Margrave passed, they shushed each other frantically, then threw nervous glances over their shoulders to make sure he hadn’t overheard.

The last of their preparations had been made by late afternoon. Sylvain and Felix would pack their provisions onto horseback, then ride to the base of a mountain, where a small village laid. After a short rest there, they would scale the mountain on foot. At this time of year, when the snow was sparser, Sylvain guessed it would take them three or four days to cross the border into the enemy camp. 

Meanwhile, a second group will have sailed the coastline and docked somewhere close by. They’d travel toward the base on foot, acting as a decoy to draw Sreng soldiers out. There with lessened security, Sylvain and Felix would recover the lance with the help of Gautier spies, regroup, and return across the mountainous border. They’d retrieve their horses from the village stable and return to the estate. Felix would be paid, his wanted posters would be taken down, and, when it seemed the worst had passed, Felix would leave.

Sylvain had mixed feelings about it—both the plan and Felix’s going. The first time Felix disappeared it felt like a slow death, and Sylvain didn’t want to know what it would feel like a second time. 

On the last day, Sylvain finally realized where Felix spent his days away from the estate. He was training in the orchard, where light exploded into shrapnel across his back. Felix was focused, and didn’t notice Sylvain as he slinked between trees, shoulder leaned against a trunk to watch Felix toss an apple into the air, then slice clean through it with his sword.

It seemed intentionally wasteful, which made Sylvain breathe a laugh. He’d realized, when they’d trained the other day, that Felix’s movements were just as fluid as they’d always been. But it was different to watch from a distance. He moved in a way that was almost animal: purely instinctive. His sword gleamed as if blessed. 

Halved apples littered the ground around Felix’s feet. Some had been opened for long enough to have begun browning, or to invite ants onto their pale faces. When Felix bent to grip another whole apple from a pile he’d made on the ground, he narrowed his eyes.

“Who’s there?” 

Caught, Sylvain revealed himself. He waved and approached with his hands up. 

Felix’s face was flushed. It was unclear if it was exertion or embarrassment. “What,” he snapped. 

Sylvain grinned. It was the latter. 

The sunlight was slowly bronzing as it wove between the branches, as if it was trying to preserve them in a single moment. It made Sylvain feel nostalgic for the place despite standing in it. A quiet peace trickled over him. 

Then Felix sheathed his sword; the metal rung crisply. “I didn’t think anything would grow here,” he said.

“Me neither,” Sylvain admitted. 

Gautier territory was far north, mountainous, and had the continent’s coldest winters. It was hard to believe any of the fledgling trees had survived. But they were perseverant little fuckers. They hooked their roots into the stubborn earth and made it work for them. 

Sylvain nodded toward the estate. “Walk back?” 

It was usual for the estate to cool in the evening. Tonight, warmth radiated from a busy kitchen, which servants scurried in and out of with platters, silverware, and baskets for bread. 

Seeing as it was his last night there for some time, Sylvain had requested a feast. As soon as he and Felix returned, the maids began preparing the table for them. They set two places near the table’s head, and covered the rest with trays of fish, beast steaks, cooked apples, steamed rice, roasted seasonal vegetables, three different kinds of bread, and two bottles of wine. 

While Felix lingered, tense, in the door, Sylvain took his seat at the head of the table. He unfolded a napkin and laid it over his lap. He smoothed his palms over it. 

“You don’t have to stay,” he reassured Felix. 

It was harder, now, to tell what Felix was thinking. He’d trained his face to express only disinterest or irritation or something between that. But he must have been feeling generous, or merely sorry. He took the chair beside Sylvain and began to fill his plate with rice. 

Heaped like that, it loomed like a snowy mountain.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I appreciate the kudos and comments so far, thank you for reading. 
> 
> Note that section three includes some violence and gore.

It was cold enough that morning to see his own breath, but Sylvain was flushed pink as he finished packing his horse. After securing the saddle, he leaned back and wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his gloved hand. 

Emily had come to the stables to see them off. She was in an expensive coat that Sylvain figured the other servants would be jealous of, some relic of her old life, and she smiled forlornly each time Sylvain looked over. 

Sylvain didn’t think it was because she was sad to see him go. Felix had been glaring at her since she arrived; the smile was a plea for help. 

Emily had also brought them extra meals. She’d prepared and wrapped them in two different packages, one marked with an _S_. Felix flatly declined his, so Sylvain took both shares and thanked the maid for her thoughtfulness. While he was standing with her in front of the stables, he winked and complimented her coat, too. 

On his way back toward the readied horses, Sylvain bumped Felix with his elbow and leaned over his shoulder. “Mind easing up a bit?”

Felix lowered his hand to his sword hilt and stalked away, silent. 

Dawn seemed to come slowly. The sky was covered in clouds, which blocked the gold of sunrise. Instead the estate was washed in a paling gray, distant things coming into focus as if Sylvain was trying to peer through a thinning fog. When he could differentiate where a tree’s outline began and ended in the orchard, it was time for them to go. 

Sylvain and Felix finally set out. They were headed north. The horses walked leisurely toward the edges of the estate. When they were far enough, Sylvain glimpsed behind them, no longer able to make out anything but the rectangular shadow of his home and a matchbook of apple trees. 

“Looking for the maid?” Felix asked. 

His tone insinuated that Sylvain was fucking her, so Sylvain let him think that. 

“Just looking,” he answered. 

Sylvain snapped his horse’s reigns and peeled ahead of Felix. 

His personal horse was a bay named Jasmine. She’d been gifted to him by Ingrid some years ago and had since led a spoiled, sheltered life. But she was fast—one of the fastest horses Sylvain had ever ridden—and responded to the lightest of his touches. It sometimes seemed as if she could read his mind. Without much trouble, he guided her along a well-worn path, the world saturated as morning extended its reach.

They rode in a peaceful silence. After some hours, they paused near a cluster of aspens to stretch and eat. Sylvain bypassed the food Emily packed for something lighter, reminding Felix they’d have to search for a place to make camp as soon as it started to get dark. The first portion of their trip would take a day and a half, if all went as planned. 

Felix wasn’t very talkative. He dismounted from his white stallion and fished into his satchel for a canteen. 

Strapped to his back, the Aegis shield gleamed. It suddenly occurred to Sylvain that he hadn’t seen the shield until Felix arrived at the stables that morning. For a moment, it felt like Felix was taunting him. 

But then Sylvain remembered that the shield was technically stolen. It belonged to the Fraldarius duke—a title Felix had abandoned. He thought back to the bag in Felix’s room, heaped _just_ casually enough to conceal its contents. 

Of course it made sense to hide it on the estate. While Sylvain trusted his servants, he wouldn’t put it past some to steal from a guest and hock it for gold. The shield’s value was obvious, though it looked old, and was badly scarred. Three deep indentations had torn through the busted metal, and they actually made the shield seem almost brittle, as if one good hit could shatter it—easy as dropping a vase. 

Felix had asked for the map earlier and was reading it now. Though he had shaved before they left, he kept a habit of running his finger and thumb around the corners of his mouth, and then down to the point of his chin, as if the beard was still there. Sylvain watched him do it twice as he approximated their location in the open plain. 

“You’re being awfully quiet,” Sylvain said. 

“I’m always quiet.”

Sylvain hummed. He stretched one arm skyward, hooking the other to hold it up, his shadow growing like a planted seed. 

“I guess I wouldn’t know,” he commented casually. 

Felix shanked him with a glare. A breathless laugh burst from Sylvain’s mouth like blood from a puncture wound. He’d only spoken the truth; the reaction was uncalled for. 

“What’s with the look?”

Felix folded the map and pushed himself off of a tree trunk. The shadows of branches moved across him until he stepped into true light, his eyes flaring. He held out the map for Sylvain.

“You haven’t changed,” he said. Sylvain took the paper and Felix took a cheap shot: “I see why you never married.”

The comment stung unexpectedly. Sylvain laughed again, more sharply. “You’ve just been waiting to say that, haven’t you?” 

He tucked his chin against his chest and pocketed the map. He told himself to let it go. 

“You know,” Sylvain said, “it’s going to be a long trip if you keep this up.” 

“Did you expect me to be grateful for the opportunity?” Felix retorted. “It’s not as though I’m doing this as a favor to you.” 

“Alright.” Sylvain held up his hands: _take it easy_. 

They stood ground and scowled at each other for a while. Sylvain understood in the first couple of seconds that he’d be the first to look away. But as he hung on, studying Felix, he saw that his resolve had chipped. The severity carved into his face was lesser, now, than it had been the night Sylvain thought about slitting his throat.

The memory came with so much clarity that it startled him. He blinked.

“I’m sorry,” Sylvain finally said. Then he turned away with a sigh. 

§

The day had warmed then cooled again. As evening submerged them in its indigo waters, Felix moved his stallion off of the path and said, “There.” 

The stallion’s black snout like an arrowhead, Sylvain followed its trajectory down to a distant wood. He nodded, leading Jasmine down a steady slope. 

The ground became harder with every mile they drew closer to the mountains. Grass littered the dirt in sparse patches. Felix led the way past rusted weapons, broken plates, and rotting game. 

Sylvain stalled his horse. 

“Felix,” he called.

Felix wasn’t too far ahead of him. When he spoke to the woods instead of to Sylvain, it was still easy to make out his sardonic tone: “It’s an old site.” 

Sylvain translated that to mean that Felix wasn’t worried about bandits. He glimpsed at a cracked hatchet a few feet from Jasmine’s hooves, then cued her to follow. 

They set up camp in a small clearing surrounded by trees—more golden-leafed aspens. Dark knots that looked like eyes were set into their trunks and watched Felix tie his horse to the western side, and watched still as Sylvain tied Jasmine close by.

As he unpacked his tent and food provisions, the back of Sylvain’s neck prickled. He’d grown used to the privacy of his own room; or, if he travelled on business, had become accustomed to the comfort of a guest bed. Surrounded by trees, he felt vulnerable.

The last time he’d slept outside was the night before the battle that nearly cost him his life. Ingrid had earlier warned him against it.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said, “but I don’t think you need to be on the front lines anymore.” What she meant was: _we’re getting older_. 

Ingrid was stuffed with advice that Sylvain never listened to. But he occasionally wished he’d taken that particular comment to heart. Instead, he drew the rest of his pride to his chest and told her she had nothing to worry about. He had a bad habit of underestimating how much something was going to hurt. 

Sylvain and Felix gathered wood and kindling for a fire. They built it between their tents, their shadows stretched over the flimsy fabric. They sat on the ground and seared beast steaks. Sylvain’s was medium-well; Felix ate his rare. 

The firelight chased shadows from Felix’s face. Earlier, he’d acknowledged Sylvain’s apology by sharing a slug of water from his canteen. Since then he’d gone back to being aloof. He was eating his meal with focus that seemed deliberate. 

Though he’d commented on it before, Sylvain didn’t actually mind the quiet. He was used to it; it gave him time to think. As they ate, his thoughts drifted like koi in a pond. 

Memory was a strange thing. At least Sylvain’s memory was. It constantly surprised him. For starters, he could no longer picture Felix’s face without the scar. Every image he conjured from their childhood, their days in the academy, during the war, the scar shined on his cheek: his permanent tear. 

It was funny that Sylvain kept thinking that. He couldn’t remember the last time Felix cried. He knew that he used to, but he could no longer picture it. 

“You’re staring,” Felix noticed. 

It was dark all around them and brimming with noises you only really hear when it’s dark: chafing leaves, emboldened frogs. Breathing. Sylvain was never sure how to explain it. Night felt to him like the breath you’d take before a song. 

“Lost in thought,” Sylvain said. He braced his palm on the ground and hoisted himself to his feet. The shift and crackle of his bones was hidden in the crackle of the fire. “We should get some rest soon.” 

Felix nodded. He must have thought that reasonable. “I’ll take first watch.” 

§

Jasmine wasn’t Sylvain’s battle horse—she spooked too easily. It was one of the reasons Ingrid was willing to part with her for free. (Ingrid was unsentimental about gifts; what she gave Sylvain for holidays or his birthday was only ever something she wouldn’t miss.) Sometimes being scared was a good thing. When the bay whinnied and reared during second watch, Sylvain took that as an urgent message. _Move fast._

An arrow struck ground near his feet. He stood in time for a second arrow to tear off a piece of his coat, then carry it into the eye of a tree. Sylvain yelled for Felix, but Felix was already halfway out of his tent. He pinpointed and rushed an archer in the western trees. He was still so fucking fast. From the archer’s shadowed chest, a phoenix wing fanned. 

Sylvain oriented himself in time for an arrow to actually hit him. The head burrowed into the soft flesh of his upper arm; the pain was star shaped. Sylvain gritted his teeth and clenched the shaft. He took a deep breath through his nose. Adrenaline churned, vibrating in his fingertips. Once you felt the heat for a minute your body learned how to armor itself. The pain became a firefly in the expanse of a glass jar. 

He pulled the arrow out and the wound slowly chugged blood. He felt its warmth distantly. Sylvain discarded it, pivoting to dodge the hefty swing of a hatchet. 

Sylvain snatched the dagger he kept strapped to his thigh and plunged it into the bandit’s neck. The heel of his palm rested against the slope of her collar in a way that could be misconstrued as tender. She stared at him as she started to die. Her pupils dilated. The color drained from her face. She took a shuddering, gasping breath. 

It would never stop amazing Sylvain. How easy a blade slipped past skin. It barely took any strength—a kid could do it. Kids did. 

“Sylvain!” Felix shouted.

The bandit’s body heaped at his feet, her hand opening around the handle of her cracked hatchet. The second archer was shaking too much to get a good shot in. His arrow flew wayside and Sylvain tackled him, pinning his arms to the cold dirt. 

Sylvain had killed so many people that the rhythm of violence had become easy. He could put it on and shuck it as easily as he could his coat. The archer was pleading for his life. Felix’s shadow fell like a guillotine. 

“Are there more of you?” he snarled. 

“P-please, pl- _ease_ —” It was just a kid. He hiccupped and frantically shook his head when Felix threatened him with the end of his sword. “Just us three! Just us three, oh, _Goddess_ —” 

Sylvain stabbed him through the eye. The boy convulsed as if electrocuted, then went totally and eerily still. Sylvain’s body was bowed over him, his full weight on the blade, chest heaving. Sylvain watched the scene and Felix from above.

“You’re hurt,” Felix said. 

Sylvain slammed back into himself. He craned back like a bear lifting onto her hind legs, a little dazed. It took more effort for him to pull the knife out than it did to sheath it in the kid’s head. The blade was coated in blood and gray matter. 

Sylvain’s own arm oozed raspberries. It was easier to think of it like that; like the pain was growing something. 

He staggered to his feet. Felix’s fingertips grazed his elbow, then flitted away, second-guessing. 

“They attacked us,” Felix said. Translation: _You did what you had to_.

Sylvain was good at doing what he had to. He was born with a crest. He lived through the war. He became the Margrave. He found Felix. 

“Here.” Felix was offering him a handkerchief. 

Sylvain blinked at it. He reached up and felt the dry skin under his own lashes. 

Felix huffed. “Hold out your arm.”

The fire needed to be stoked before it went out. Sylvain thought that over and over again while Felix cleaned, then wrapped his wound, tying a tight knot around the sore limb. He worked deftly and silently. Finally he promised, “I’ll stoke the fire.” 

Sylvain wiped off his blade and strapped it back to his leg. Felix followed through with stoking the fire. Then they did the hard work of moving the bodies to the edges of the campsite. They had no way to bury them, so they lined them on their backs under the shade of trees. 

It was a grotesque vision. Their wounds were blackening as they aged. By the time first light slithered into the clearing, the bodies had begun to draw flies. Sylvain watched a caterpillar trek across the woman’s delicate ankle. 

Sylvain tucked his chin to his chest, saying a prayer for them, and Felix looked at him strangely. 

§

It was hard for Sylvain to find faith, especially after the war. For him, faith took the shape of a dagger; she carved herself into him. He resisted at first. He at least tried. But the truth was that every scar on his body became, somehow, a reminder of that faith. 

He’d been spared. Saved.

Whether for salvation or by mistake, it was impossible for him not to read into his being alive. He went to church, bowed his head, and confessed that narcissism a thousand times. 

It was Mercedes that finally answered. “I don’t think it’s narcissistic at all,” she said. “I think that the Goddess helped you see your path, just as she’s helped others see theirs.”

Without faith it was hard to make sense of all the killing he’d done. Sylvain used to dream of killing people who wore his face. Dozens of them coming for him at a time. He stabbed them, strangled them, cut off their hands, gouged their eyes—and he felt all of their pain. It felt good in an indescribable way. 

Still he would wake from those dreams in a panic. His body would be damp and aching all over. Sometimes he’d feel scratches on his own face, or find skin caked under his nails like dirt: his own hands transmuted into weapons. 

§

The rest of the trip was quiet. Peaceful, even. And it left Sylvain exhausted in the way only the living could be. 

He heaped his coat onto a dresser. He and Felix each had their own room in the inn; they were cozy, and warm despite the cold which clamped down on the village like a wolf’s maw. Sylvain felt lonely. He drew back a curtain just to catch a glimpse of his reflection in the stomach of night and grimaced. He drew a hand over his beard, silver needles in the rust. Every day he looked older. The fact was hard for him to face.

Sylvain let the curtain fall closed and dropped heavily into tonight’s bed. The walls were wooden; he could hear the wind hiss as it slithered between planks. Sylvain unstrapped his dagger and tucked it under his pillow. It was the first time in years that he’d felt the need. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks a ton for your comments and kudos! I get nervous about responding to them but please know I am deeply grateful.

“I feel like a mule,” Felix complained. 

He was weighed down by a supply pack so gargantuan that it towered behind him like a black bear. If it was any consolation, Sylvain’s was similarly daunting—but it was clear Felix was used to traveling lightly. Being loaded like a carriage just didn’t suit him. 

Felix casted Sylvain a warning glance and Sylvain realized he’d been fighting a snicker. 

The inn’s owner was named Mareike. Sylvain guessed she was in her mid-fifties; she seemed pretty exasperated with her work, but she cooked well and fussed over him and Felix like a mother. She’d just now stepped back inside her modest lobby, her pale face reddened from cold and framed by flyaway hairs. 

“I can’t thank you enough for that,” Sylvain said. 

Mareike waved her hand as if swatting away a fly. _Think nothing of it_. “Marlowe can be a real jerk.” She winked. “But I set him straight for you.”

And all for the low price of two large bullions. 

Mareike handed Sylvain some papers, which he’d need to produce for Marlowe himself to retrieve their horses from the stable in a few weeks. He kneeled to tuck them into a pocket of his pack, glad his face was hidden when Mareike asked Felix, “Are you sure that bag isn’t about to pull you over?” 

Felix looked drained by the time they left the inn. Sylvain remembered Felix giving him the same, worn stare when they trudged back to the monastery after a hard battle. Back then, he would’ve swung his arm around Felix’s shoulders, draping himself over him like a heavy cloak, knowing that Felix was too tired to shove him off. They’d be close enough to smell each other’s sweat and blood. Now, the exhaustion was just amusing.

“None of this is funny,” Felix said, although the corner of his mouth was hooked. 

“I didn’t say anything,” Sylvain deflected.

He didn’t have to.

§

They’d entered the village yesterday afternoon, passing a sign staked into the ground near the entrance: _Lapointe_. After settling prices with the innkeeper and stableman, Sylvain and Felix parted ways to wander. 

Lapointe sat almost at the base of the range that separated Fódlan from Sreng. The mountain’s shadows kept the village chilly and dark. Snow threatened when clouds rolled in. Sylvain tilted his head back and watched them worriedly, but no snow had come overnight. Instead, everything this morning was damp with crystals. As the sun forced its way between peaks, it melted the second skin of frost on the rooftops. 

It was difficult to describe Lapointe as anything but hardy. Only root vegetables grew in the rigid ground, so most people worked in the small array of shops in the marketplace. The town’s main exports were armory-related; Sylvain had never before set foot into the village, but occasionally purchased wares from them. Yesterday, Sylvain had checked out a few of the stores and purchased necessities—gloves, whetstones, furs, elixirs. A thick clump of smoke rose from the blacksmith’s workshop as Sylvain walked around; peddlers packed their carriages with weapons. 

When night fell, Sylvain entered the tavern. A busty bartender poured him a drink. The patrons seated at the tables were raucous and scarred, laughing loudly and pounding their fists on the wood as they exchanged battle stories. From Sylvain’s understanding, Sreng clans occasionally tried to force their way into Lapointe. Luckily, the village was well-positioned so as not to receive surprise attacks in huge numbers. Small clans would be driven back by village warriors and mercenaries. If that wasn’t enough in the past, they’d ask for Gautier soldiers and Sylvain, interested in keeping good relations, would send them over. 

Sylvain knew better than to identify himself as the Margrave, however. When the bar’s patrons whiffed money on him, they casted dark looks in his direction. More than hardy, Sylvain realized as he sat on an uncomfortable barstool, the people of Lapointe were proud; they wanted outsiders to know they could handle themselves. 

He only stayed for one drink before he meandered back toward the inn. As he left the bar behind, the chatter was siphoned into the darkness. The village became quiet, and as still as a painting. A lantern light honeyed a lithe figure near a post. Sylvain wet his chapped lips. 

It was Felix. “Sylvain,” he acknowledged. His voice drew Sylvain closer. 

He stood near enough for their shadows to collapse over each other. Felix was watching him with a keen eye, but his posture was otherwise relaxed. 

He wanted to talk business. “Those thieves…”

“Yeah,” Sylvain said. “I know.”

The group hadn’t followed them for any particular reason. They probably didn’t recognize Felix’s face or shield. The attack was one of convenience: the weapons had been picked up off the field they passed through into the woods. They’d thought they could take one of them out while the other was still asleep. They’d thought they’d have an advantage in number. 

“They made a stupid choice,” Felix said, “and it cost them their lives.” He was being reasonable, if not cold. “I won’t be losing any sleep over it.”

“Are you trying to make me feel better?” Sylvain teased. 

Felix lifted his chin and a gold foil covered his eyes. The road through town was empty of other people; he didn’t need to lower his voice. His voice lowered until it almost sounded tender. 

“You’ve gotten soft,” Felix said. 

Sylvain kissed him then. There was no good reason for him to do it, only that he wanted to. Felix’s lips were thin and cold. He didn’t reciprocate. He didn’t pull away. When Sylvain finally stepped back, inhaling, he watched Felix’s lashes quiver. It was the only indication he’d felt anything at all. 

Something broke between them: a mirror, a shield, a picture frame. It shattered into glistening stars around their feet, the ground opening up into a sky for them to fall through. 

Sylvain swallowed. He tilted his face toward the inn, a few yards from them, his breath veiling his expression. He counted the lanterns hung along the path. Their glows reached out, trembling. 

“I don’t mean to be so complicated,” Sylvain finally said. “I just—”

“You don’t need to explain.” 

Felix had lowered his eyes. The lantern light caught his scar just so. It seemed to shine. It was as if the skin was cracking, something heavenly and bright waiting beyond the shell. Sylvain wanted to laugh at himself for being so transparent, so needy.

Of course he didn’t have to explain. It was obvious that Sylvain missed him; the missing had swept him up in a thick, nostalgic fog. He kept losing himself in it. It was only when the world clarified that his feelings toward Felix sharpened. 

When they passed the post that morning, Sylvain felt a thorny rose bloom in his stomach. The fog had again cleared. His gaze lingered on the lantern, unlit and moving haplessly with a chilly wind.

§

The sun rose. They began their ascent. 

In the mountains, the footing was poor, paths wound like slaty-grey snakes, shedding frost and small pebbles. The cold nipped the ends of Sylvain’s fingers and toes. After a few hours of toughing it out, he paused to put on an extra pair of gloves he’d bought in Lapointe and offered yet another pair to Felix. 

Felix’s skin and hair had taken on a blue tint as the temperature dropped. Sylvain occasionally glimpsed at his lips to make sure they hadn’t begun to purple. Flurries came in bursts as the wind picked up snow from higher points and carried it down to them. Snowflakes clumped on their coats. 

Suddenly, a rock gave under Felix’s foot. He gritted his teeth around a yelp, snatching at the ground as he fell to a knee, his other boot planted firmly in the gravelly dirt. Sylvain backtracked and held out his hand. Felix took it, hauling himself up. 

“Thanks,” he muttered. 

As Felix adjusted his pack and ponytail, Sylvain glanced down the cliff, then quickly back up. He remained close to Felix as they continued.

They weren’t planning to climb much higher. They were maybe a quarter up the mountain, each inhale cutting their lungs, and once it leveled a little, they planned to slowly sidle its width. It would take a few days to get around. Their tents and furs would help keep them warm through the night, if necessary, but Sylvain had also read that the mountainside was cratered by caves. He was silently making deals with the Goddess to help him find them. 

Felix traveled the same way he battled: with intense, quiet focus. 

When they’d traveled to and from the monastery during the war, Sylvain had done all the talking. Felix mostly spoke and answered with looks or small gestures. An eyeroll every time Sylvain pointed out a pretty girl marching in front of them. A shove if Sylvan crooned over his mussed hair. Once Sylvain licked his thumb and smeared dirt off of his face and Felix actually bit him. 

It had surprised Sylvain, though the bite was too soft to break skin. Felix’s teeth left a crescent moon of indentions on the outside of his thumb and wrist crease. Sylvain’s mouth opened into an ‘O’. He furrowed his brow at Felix and Felix blushed and stalked away. 

Sylvain flexed his hand as if he could feel Felix’s teeth now. He was cold but sweating profusely under all his heavy layers. When they came to a wider part in the slender path, he suggested they take a break. 

The world looked empty from where they sat. The ground seemed distant and blurry. Sylvain unpacked Emily’s lunches from a few days ago, sure they’d gone bad by now, and left them unopened at the side of the path. Felix eyed them while Sylvain searched for something else to eat.

“I saw her leave your quarters a few nights ago,” Felix said. “The maid.” 

Sylvain had just found dried strips of beast hide and sighed heavily. He got tired of having the same conversation. “It’s not what you think.” 

“Oh?” Felix prompted. “Is she fucking you?” 

The implication was obvious. Sylvain had just kissed him—a man—and had remained a bachelor all his life. But he was armored with his own information; he huffed a mean laugh through his nose. 

“You don’t really expect me to believe that nothing was going on with you and your old partner, right?” 

Felix’s expression turned severe. He warned Sylvain, “Don’t talk about him.” 

_On the side of a snowy cliff_ wasn’t on Sylvain’s list of Best Places to Get into a Heated Argument. He backed off, distributing jerky between them and chewing quietly. 

Hadn’t it always been like this? In the monastery they couldn’t go a day without getting on each other’s nerves. Still he wrote Felix letters. Still he prayed for his safety. Still he hoped that one day he’d appear at the Gautier estate: whole, alive. Maybe Sylvain was a fool to think he needed anything from Felix after all these years. 

“Hey,” Felix muttered. He tore his jerky with his hands, embarrassed. “I didn’t mean…what I said.” 

Felix had snowflakes stuck in his lashes. His scar reacted differently to the cold and had turned lavender. He was glowing. And goddamn if Sylvain didn’t soften, same as he always had. 

§

He’d been pondering on and off all day, his focus drifting as they climbed and walked and took breaks for sips of too-cold water. Each mouthful made his teeth hurt, a sunny pain radiating through his gums for seconds after.

Leonie, Sylvain had finally realized. The innkeeper reminded him of Leonie. 

It’d been years since Sylvain had seen her. Last he heard, she’d become the mayor of her hometown. The work kept her happy and busy as a bee. 

Leonie learned about the Gautier orchard about a year after the first apples came. A crate had been delivered to her village by a merchant. As a joke, perhaps, she sent a handful of sunflower seeds for Sylvain to plant—but unfortunately, they didn’t take to the soil. 

Leonie had always followed through with what she said she’d do. Sylvain liked that about her. When he wrote Leonie an apologetic letter about their stunted, brown stems, she simply had a vase of sunflowers delivered.

Sylvain sat them on a shelf in his study, where they lived far longer than he anticipated. It had been a vivid, warm summer. Cloudless. The flowers craned their faces toward their window, their leaves opening like arms. The memory warmed him.

§

Evening veiled them in a mist. Sylvain’s jaw was clenched tightly as he started a fire. He’d brought a fine, silver lance with him on the journey, and it was propped against the rocky cliffside. It reflected the spark of a flame as it finally caught; orange wavered in the metal as he oxygenated the blaze. 

It was hard work. The air was damp and worrisome. Felix tossed another dry page among the sticks, distracted by the dark clouds trudging across the sky. 

They’d had no luck finding a cave. Sylvain held out hope for tomorrow. Tonight, he said of their fire, “We’ll have to keep an eye on it.”

“It’s going to snow,” Felix answered.

Sylvain shrugged, but he could taste it in the air. The droplets spraying his face were tiny and cold enough to feel like glass. 

“Maybe it’ll hold off.” 

It wouldn’t be a mild autumn, like the one that followed the summer he’d had the sunflowers. It was going to be frigid, instead. Sylvain had waited too long and he wanted to kick himself. 

Across from him, Felix sniffed. He had removed his gloves and was holding his hands palm-up toward the fire, light dancing like magic along the indented lines. Flayn once claimed, after reading some book, that you could see a person’s whole future in their hands. She traced lines over Ignatz’s, Raphael’s, and Felix’s palms: _Here is your heartline—aha, as I suspected! You will have a spectacular, lasting romance. And here, look, your lifeline is so long…_

Flayn wouldn’t touch Sylvain’s hands. She was skeptical of where they’d been: in some girl’s pussy, around some guy’s cock. Clawing at the damp walls of a dark well. 

On the mountainside Sylvain removed his gloves, flexing his fingers. In the dead center of his palm were three lines running parallel, then crossing at a single point; it looked like a chicken foot. What did that mean? Was his own body telling him he was a coward? If so, it was nothing new. 

Sylvain let Felix take charge of the fire and set up a tent. There was only enough room for one. Felix eyed it warily. 

Sylvain pacified: “Aren’t we sleeping in shifts, anyway?” 

Then he took first watch. He offered because Felix looked like he could use the rest. 

With his body, Sylvain sheltered the fire from the wind, which blew from the west, and sat overlooking the clouded peaks below and above him. The cold burrowed into his arms and cheeks and the back of his neck; if it would relent, just a little, he thought he might find being up here peaceful. As it was, he almost wished to arrive at Sreng faster, where the cold collapsed into a desert, making way for blistering heat during the day. Although nights, he’d heard, were just as chilled.

It was a lonely watch. Time trudged forward. After a while, Sylvain felt frozen solid; he kept his joints tucked close to his body unless he needed to stoke or add to the fire, and when he did, his muscles were stubborn and stiff. He could no longer feel much. 

Case in point: he didn’t feel it when Felix touched his shoulder. Just heard him say, “Get some rest.”

They’d brought extra furs, which were half-arranged, half-draped over the cot. Sylvain sealed the tent and covered himself with the furs and other blankets, stretching to coax some warmth back into his body. Everything smelled like Felix. Sylvain laid back and looked at the dark walls, the wind caught in and flung from the fabric. 

When he dozed, he dreamed. Or really he remembered. 

It was wartime. They were about to reclaim Myrddin. The night before they set out, everyone had been antsy from all the waiting around. Claude had increased dinner rations to raise morale. Annette and Hilda, two more of Sylvain’s monastery friends, flirted into their possession a few bottles of wine, which they shared with their fellow generals.

Felix drunk a glass or two before his cheeks turned pink, but it was hard to tell in the light of the fire. They were sitting in a circle with the wine-flirts, Ingrid, Claude, and Raphael. Weird group. For the first few rounds Ingrid wouldn’t stop scolding the guys, but eventually she started having fun. Raphael, to prove his strength, picked her up and hoisted her over his head. Sylvain thought she’d throw a fit, but she started laughing instead. She had hit the perfect threshold of being drunk. Any more or less would’ve ended the night bloodily. 

Everyone distracted, Sylvain dropped onto the ground beside Felix. He sat cross-legged; their knees touched. 

Ingrid finally yelled through her cackling, “That’s enough—put me down!” 

“Sure thing!” Raphael boomed. 

Ingrid was swept back onto her feet. Hilda and Annette sang their praises for their entertainment while Claude seemed either relieved or impressed that no one was dead.

“What about you?” Sylvain teased, bumping Felix’s shoulder with his. “Enjoying the show?” 

“Hardly,” Felix said. But he was half-smiling. The scar, superimposed onto his face, didn’t move with the motion at all. 

The memory melted and oozed through Sylvain’s fingers, resolidifying. It was the same night. Felix was in Sylvain’s tent, panting into his shoulder as Sylvain jerked him off. His breath was spiced with wine. He kept rutting into Sylvain’s hand, his body reacting on its own, Felix probably unaware he was even doing it. 

Every time Sylvain stroked his thumb over the head of Felix’s cock, Felix bit back a moan. That was what drove Sylvain fucking crazy: Felix wanting to control that and not being able to. Not completely. 

The air grew heavy and hot around them. Sweat pricked Sylvain’s chest and thighs, then slid down his skin. He was hard in his smallclothes. He knew Felix could feel it. He was half on top of him, braced on his elbow, hand fisted in the vicious red hair at the back of Sylvain’s head. 

Sylvain was whispering to him. Just nonsensical, filthy things. Finally Felix bit into the junction of Sylvain’s neck and shoulder, muffling a moan, and slicked Sylvain’s fist with his come. 

It wasn’t the first time he’d seen Felix come; it wouldn’t be the last. Still, Sylvain had never asked him to return the favor. But that night he muttered, “Felix, please.” 

Felix’s hand was shaking as he gripped Sylvain through his smallclothes. The touch was uncertain, almost shy. His face was flushed a gorgeous red. It made his scar burn redder. 

Of course neither the scar nor Felix were really there. Sylvain was alone under the furs, unfreezing; reminiscing too eagerly. He’d pulled off his glove with his teeth earlier, and bit down hard on it as he finished himself off, his hand and stomach left sticky. 

Sylvain spat the glove out and swallowed. He tipped back his head in a daze. It had been a while since he’d done that. Work and becoming a decent person sat, weighty, on his shoulders. Turned out he was struggling with the latter again. 

Sylvain shoved the covers off of him before they stained. He cleaned himself and what else he needed to. By the time he was done his teeth were chattering. 

He closed his eyes, his breathing a soft shudder. He tried to conjure the sunflowers. But suddenly he could only remember them after they’d shriveled and browned. It happened long before summer transitioned into fall. The flowers shed crisp petals that looked like eyelids. 

By then, his father was dead and Felix had been gone for over five years. Six, maybe seven. Sylvain’s eyes had dried. 

In twenty years, he’d forgotten most things about Felix. Now the memories were drowning him. Around him, the tent walls were inky blue and endless. Sylvain sank back under the furs, numbed again.


End file.
